The Man Who Would Be Prince

Ending the slaughter of men, woman and children in Darfur would be nice. But mercenaries? Heaven forfend. Feigned outrage and lip service are the order of the day.

Money Q:

"I'm so sick of hearing that nothing can be done," he (Erik Prince CEO of Blackwater Worldwide) says. "The Janjaweed is a truly unfettered bully. No one has stood up to them. If they were met by a mobile quick reaction force of African Union soldiers, the Janjaweed would quickly learn their habits were not sustainable." And to ensure accountability, he says, the U.S. could send 25 military officers to observe how Blackwater is doing and serve as liaisons."

Oh yeah and Prince says he do the mission at cost.

But forget it. Too sensible. Too economical. Too right for this world.

Run, Gunga, Run

"Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire," I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama's speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.

"On the other hand, I continued, I could cite four or five actions -- not speeches -- that John McCain has taken that elicit my admiration, even my awe. First, of course, is his decision as a Vietnam War POW to refuse freedom out of concern that he would be exploited for propaganda purposes. To paraphrase what Kipling said about Gunga Din, John McCain is a better man than most."

Meet the Friedmans

You don't have to very tolerant of child molesters to feel something for this family. A father with a disorder he didn't fight hard enough; a son who, it appears, was wrongly accused of being part of a father-son child molesting tag team and a police force and DAs office willing to believe the most outlandish stories imaginable.

Perhaps the most sympathetic character in the whole film is the uncle who was molested by his older brother, (the father) when he was 8 years old. He still has no memory of it, but is gay today with no anger or resentment.

The least sympathetic, son David, the "Number one birthday clown in New York City."That's one angry clown.

If an Environmentalist Tells You He Loves You, Check It Out

Environmental Skeptic Bjorn Lomborg observes that the world spending on anti-terrorism measures far exceeds the "bang for the buck" we would get if we spent the same money on disease prevention, medicine and food for the world's poor.

Same is true with what we are planning to spend on climate change mitigation.

Spencerblog doesn't fully agree with Lomborg's analysis but it is good to see people considering the costs versus the benefits of particular programs and policies.

The hard part is getting the analysis right. Projecting what will happen if and when we change spending and particular policies.

Democrats argue the billions spent on the Iraq war are not cost effective in fighting the overall war on terror. They may be right.

But as a percentage of GNP and inflation adjusted dollars not to mention lives lost, the cost of fighting WWII was much higher. At least forty times higher in monetary costs. Was it worth fighting? Pat Buchanan may not think so. But most historians and others do.

Leaving Iraq under the control of Saddam Hussein would have had high costs too. And accurately guessing the future costs is beyond the ability of economists, environmentals and most others.

The same is true with terrorism. While we spend a lot to combat it per projected life lost, western societies and the people who live in them put a high value on security. That the terrorists have taken their war to easier and smaller targets is regretable and maybe predictable but it is wrong-headed to suggest the world should spend less on efforts to crack down and dissuade terrorists from acting.

It's kind of like blaming the home owner who spends thousands on a home security system for a burglary at neighbor's home.

We don't blame the neighbor for getting robbed, we blame the criminal and use all of society's means to bring them to justice.

There is a psychological aspect to all this. Different societies and cultures are more and less tolerant to these sorts of terrorist or criminal threats.

As Lomborg points out the U.S. tolerates 30,000 highway deaths a year. But we will not suicide bombings that would take the lives of even 300 people a year. Why? Because it offends our sense of justice, peace and security. The lives lost on the highways are accidental and seemingly random. They are not driven by a hatred of our way of life, they ARE our way of life. We're used to them. It's just a cost of 300 million people being free and going about their daily lives. And yet, even those lost lives we constantly try to mitigate with stronger, safer cars and regulations.

Lomborg is on stronger ground when he talks about global climate change and the best, most cost effective way of combating it, if, in fact, it is a real threat to a significant portion of the globe.

Randy Pausch R.I.P.

"Death was, as he had made clear that magic evening on the stage, both near and inevitable. But he had made sure his legacy was set. He had done all that a father can -- provide for his children and, at the end, let them know that all he really did in this life was to love them.

"Life is not complicated and it is not fair, Randy Pausch might have said. It's just hard sometimes."

A Comical Look at Terrorism

Take Your Sustainability and Shove It!

Peter Huber paints what seems like an accurate picture of the future of carbon energy: It's big and bright, despite what anti-carbon hysterics like Al Gore say.

Developing countries simply won't trade economic progress for the half-baked promise of a cooler earth, more poverty and low growth.

Coal especially will figure prominently in India and China. Australia is exporting coal to all takers. And we have a bunch of it in Pennsylvania but the Democrats and some Republicans are all against digging for it and using it. Go figure.

Money Q:

No serious student of global politics can accept the notion that the world will soon join ranks behind Brussels, Washington and the gloomy computer and its minders. Dar is surely right when he says, "The U.S. and Japan will not tell Asia and Africa to choose poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy over electricity." Europe might, but nobody will listen. It won't have moral authority until its own citizens are emitting less carbon than Bangladeshis. That won't happen soon.

It's the Cover-Up, Stupid!

The U.S. mainstream media is staying pretty far away from the John Edwards love child story. However, the Brits are used to covering scandals like this one.

The most damaging thing to Edwards' reputation is not the alleged affair (or the child it produced) but the elaborate cover-up he engaged in last year to prevent it from ruining his presidential chances. Allowing a married aide with two young kids to take the rap for him, to pretend he was the father of his mistress' child. Wow! Talk about misplaced loyalty.

Anyway, it's always the cover-up that gets 'em.

Which brings us to Cece Grimes.

She's pleading guilty to a charge of destroying evidence during a federal investigation into her business dealings with Curt Weldon. Just what the evidence was that she destroyed is still unclear. But it is entirely possible that the evidence wasn't related to any "crime" but of a personal relationship that if made public would have been embarrassing to herself and others.

The cover-up in this case is a felony. There is embarrassment and there is committing a crime. To avoid one, Grimes did the other and ended up with both.

Obama Blows Off Wounded Soldiers

McCain is hammering Obama for cancelling a visit to a military hosptial in Germany to see wounded American soldiers.

The Obama campaign said it would be "inappropriate" for the senator to visit the troops on a campaign funded trip.

That doesn't wash. The Pentagon said only Obama shouldn't visit the troops with campaign personnel. The easy answer for Obama would have been to leave the campaign personnel behind and visit the troops on his own.

The McCain campaign said it's never wrong for a U.S. Senator to visit wounded troops to show his appreciation for their sacrifice and service.

That's right.

Obama blew it. And whatever criticism he gets for his campaign's decision, he deserves.

Creeps Online

UPDATE: Though I didn't use it in the column I got a kick out of reading that NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, lists among its reasons "Why NAMBLA Matters" this:

"NAMBLA has consistently protested ill advised wars that needlessly maim and kill young people and devastate families here and abroad. Even before it started, NAMBLA warned against the Iraq invasion. Our warning was on our Web site long before many of the politicians, who belatedly recognized their immense error, echoed our concerns."

In other words: Make Love, Not War. Only in their case... to boys.

As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows. And sometimes not so strange.

Honor Killings Not Honored Here

A Muslim father is accused of killing his own daughter because she wanted to divorce the man he'd arranged for her to marry.

In Georgia. So much for respecting the cultural practices of some people.

As British governor to India Charles Napier explained to the locals back in the day:

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

A Challenge to Murtha

Russell’s clear on where he stands. No doubt Barack Obama would label him bitter and clingy. “I am a Conservative,” he says in his defining campaign statement. “I believe in the sovereignty and security of this one nation, under God. I believe the primary role of government is to provide for the common defense and a legal framework to protect families and individual liberty. … I believe that no one owes me anything just because I live and breathe.”

Sounds like a winner, even if he doesn't win. And check out who's running his campaign.

McCain Right on Surge

Thomas Friedman says McCain was "right on the surge." But the story has shifted to Obama's advantage.

Because the surge worked, Iraq is now safe enough to start withdrawing American troops and on a timetable.

What Friedman glances over is that Obama and his party were WRONG on the surge. That if his advice had been followed, there would likely be chaos in Iraq today.

Bush and McCain may have made the world and America safer for an Obama presidency but that's still a pretty big leap of faith, given his misjudgement and lack of experience.

Obama refuses to admit the surge worked, and disparages it every time he is asked about it. The left hammered Bush for not being able to admit mistakes. Bush, knowing that if he did, would be hammered all the more.

But Obama is supposed to be the anti-Bush, Change Man, a new kind of politician that tells the truth even when it is inconvenient. That should include admitting his own misjudgements and mistakes. He has done this occasionally on little things, like his phrasing of how Pennsylvanians hang on to their religion and guns out of bitterness and fear. But Iraq is a big thing. Defeating al Qaida there is hugely important. A peaceful and stable Iraq is hugely important to that region. Giving credit where credit is due would help not hurt his campaign.

UPDATE: But Obama is showing no signs he constitutionally capable of admitting this mistake as this here clearly shows.

The Fannie Freddie Bailout

"The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever."

Why Jesse Hates Barack

Shelby Steele explains why Jesse wants to cut off Obama's goods. The reason is because Obama is in the process of cutting off Jesse's.

Money Q:

"They (Jackson, Sharpton et al.) ushered in an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage. To argue differently -- that black development, for example, might be a more enduring road to black equality -- took whites "off the hook" and was therefore an unpardonable heresy. For this generation, an Uncle Tom was not a black who betrayed his race; it was a black who betrayed the group's bounty of moral leverage over whites. And now comes Mr. Obama, who became the first viable black presidential candidate precisely by giving up his moral leverage over whites."

Shocker: Varks Lose!

My interview with the player-manager of the Avenging Aardvarks softball team is up.

UPDATE: The eighth-seeded Varks upset the number one-seeded Backwards K in the first game of the playoffs and then lost a 10-9 heartbreaker to the Cult of the Splendid Splinters. A second loss to Joe's Bar ended the season.

The Varks' Player Manager, who declined to be publicly identified, said he was proud of his players, especially his left-fielder Mike P. who left early from third base against the Splinters on a fly-out to left and took the team out of a big inning. He didn't make the same mistake last night at the bars.

"Though he was tagged out at home by his wife," said his coach, "it was a close play and showed terrific hustle."

Cajoling: The New Torture

"The attorney for Ramir Steve, charged in the shooting death of a cab driver early last Christmas Eve, is charging his client was "cajoled" by police into giving an incriminating statement and he is seeking to have it barred from use at trial."

According to the Kenerman English Multilingual Dictionary: cajole means "to coax (someone into doing something), often by flattery.Example: The little girl cajoled her father into buying her a new dress."

No doubt Steve's civil rights were violated. And that manipulative little girl ought to be spanked and sent to bed without any dinner.

Audacious!

"For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

"We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall — I’m no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas."

The Torture Continues

America's despicable treatment of detained terrorists continues, as reported in the Washington Post.

"Salim Ahmed Hamdan, an alleged al-Qaeda driver who faces a historic military trial next week, testified Tuesday that a female interrogator elicited information from him using sexually suggestive behavior that he called "improper."

"Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who is accused in a terrorism conspiracy, told a military court that during questioning in 2002, a female interrogator "came close to me, she came very close, with her whole body towards me. I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of the soldiers."

"Did she touch your thigh?" asked Hamdan's attorney Charles Swift."Yes. . . . I said to her, 'What do you want?' " Hamdan said at a pretrial hearing. "She said, 'I want you to answer all of my questions.' "

"Did you answer all of her questions after that?" Swift asked. Hamdan said he did.Hamdan's attorneys are seeking to persuade a judge to throw out incriminating statements he allegedly made to interrogators at the U.S. military prison here, arguing that they were obtained through coercive tactics."

Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens has reportedly volunteered to subject himself to the same sort of horrific treatment to see if it qualifies as "torture."

In the meantime, detainee lawyer David Remes drops his pants at a press conference in Yemen to demonstrate the abusive search techniques employed at Guantanamo Bay.

According to Remes they include the running of a finger around the inside band of prisoners' Fruit of the Looms to check for contraband. Remes mother must have warned him as a kid: "Be sure to always wear clean underwear, you never know when you might be in an accident or have to appear at a press conference and drop your pants to make an important point."

Here's how Remes described the "torment" his clients endured:

"... in addition to this torment, which has become so typical that we don’t even talk about it anymore, now the torment also consists of constant body searches in which the men are required to pull their shirts up to their chest, drop their pants, and then the corn-fed U.S. military sticks their thumbs under the prisoner’s underwear band and circles the prisoner’s torsos.”

"Corn-fed U.S. military?" That sounds like some sort of slur attempt, but an odd one. Does Remes refer to his clients as "rice eaters?"

Remes is reportedly a Columbia and Harvard educated partner in a top New York Law firm. What a credit he is to his alma maters, his city and his nation.

Look at it this way, he could have been going commando!

UPDATE: Or maybe Remes has seen the film Deliverance one time too many.

"The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it's time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won."

Barack Pivots and Pivots Some More

Barack Obama tries to convince his base that he hasn't gone soft on an American defeat in Iraq.

Now that the surge has worked, a surge that defeatist Democrats and Obama denied would work, the Dem presidential candidate is attempting to pivot to a more reasonable centrist position. But the hard-left is going ape over it. So Obama pivots again.

He's the guy on the basketball court who has picked up his dribble and is trapped on the baseline. All his teammates are covered, so he has no one to pass to. He would like to call "Time out" but he can't remember if he's used them all up. So he spins around on one foot like a top. A five-second call is coming. In desperation he tries to wing the ball off an opponent's leg to send it out of bounds. He looks confused, desperate and frustrated.

Still, he must spin, even though he has lost possession of the issue. He whines to the referee for a foul call. The ref looks at him and shakes his head.

Now, he's in danger out losing possession of his fan base, and they of their marbles. They're booing and throwing beer and popcorn at him.

How the anti-war left's brilliant plan to hang the war around the GOP's neck and cruise to political victory by U.S. military defeat in Iraq, was ruined by the toughness and smarts of Gen. David Petraeus, our warriors and our Iraqi allies.

UPDATE: Peter Wehner demolishes Obama's claims as they fly in the face of reality on the ground.

Wehner:

In his New York Times op-ed today on Iraq, Barack Obama makes several claims worth examining.

In his opening paragraph, Obama writes:

"The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States."

A phased redeployment of combat troops can now be done in the context of a victory in Iraq, whereas when Obama first called for the complete withdrawal of all combat troops in Iraq by March 2008, it would have led to an American defeat. It is because President Bush endorsed a counterinsurgency plan which Senator Obama fiercely opposed that we are in a position to both withdraw additional combat troops and prevail in Iraq.

"He's still clinging to his 16 month timetable for getting the troops home. That's probably too quick, but I understand why he's sticking with it: because he doesn't want the Republicans to call him a flip-flopper and also, I'd guess, because he figures that being overly optimistic about the withdrawal timetable isn't going to hurt him with the electorate."

The flip-flopper doesn't want to be called a flip-flopper so he lies instead? That's some defense.

A Real Torture Victim Escapes to the U.S.

"His jailers thrashed him with a metal cable, beat his testicles and kicked in his teeth, he said. They held his face down in a pool of excrement. They tied his arms behind his back and hung him from the ceiling. At other times, strapping him to a chair, they kept him awake night after night, cutting him and rubbing salt into the wounds."

If he had planted a ticking nuclear bomb in Tehren I might understand. But the mullahs were just trying to break his dissident spirit. Not very sporting. And the difference between them and us.

Interesting that he says if the U.S. attacked Iran, he might have to go back and fight for his country himself. In the meantime, he's going fishing. He's earned it.

How The Left Turns

“I’m disgusted with him,” said Ms. Shade, an artist. “I can’t even listen to him anymore. He had such an opportunity, but all this ‘audacity of hope’ stuff, it’s blah, blah, blah. For all the independents he’s going to gain, he’s going to lose a lot of progressives.”

Ah, go to hell, Shade. We're Clintonians now.

UPDATE: New Newsweek poll: Obama and McCain in dead heat. He needs to take the advice of the Ariana Huffington and Ms. Shade pivot back to his base on the hard left. Isn't that what Karl Rove would advise?

U.S. Deserters Sent Home from Canada

Canada is sending U.S. military deserters home to face the music. Mostly that music will be nothing more than a dishonorable discharge which the deserters will well deserve.

Leaving their comrades in arms to take up their slack is not honorable behavior.

This is, afterall, an all-volunteer army. People who sign up do so with the knowledge that they could be sent places they don't particularly like and put in Harm's Way. In return for their commitment they receive numerous benefits, not the least of which is the grateful respect of their countrymen for their service.

Those who cheat on that deal, don't deserve that respect.

It is easy to sympathize with some young men who immaturely joined the military but found they had a true distaste for rules and regulations it imposed on them. Those who saw combat and found that they were psychologically unsuited for it are even easier to sympathize with. But neither can justify desertion.

No doubt, some of these young men have convinced themselves they were acting heroically by fleeing an immoral war. But many more will live to regret their actions as they mature. It will be the tragedy of their lives and theirs to live with.

A Vote for Courage

The Audacity of "Emptiness"

He seems to believe that his shifts and twists and clever panders — as opposed to bold, principled leadership on important matters — will entice large numbers of independent and conservative voters to climb off the fence and run into his yard.

Maybe. But that’s a very dangerous game for a man who first turned voters on by presenting himself as someone who was different, who wouldn’t engage in the terminal emptiness of politics as usual.

Oh no! The Obamessiah is just another politician? What were they thinking?

Snatching Victory in Iraq

Al Qaida is on the run and being cut down in its last bastion of Mosul.

In times of war, one must watch one's retreating adversary and be prepared for it to pivot and attack. The same is true of one's political opponents.

Witness Barack Obama. Having won the Democratic nomination vowing to end this unwinnable and disastrous war in Iraq he now sounds willing to stay long enough to allow the Iraqi government and our military to win it.

Talk about a pivot.

And to the Democratic base that nominated him: Suckers!

UPDATE: Interesting how the Times of London gets the story but the New York Times ignores it. Only bad news stories about Iraq are "fit to print?" Or maybe its because the London Times is less psychologically invested in our defeat than the NYT folks. Whatever, the NYT is no longer this country's paper of record.

Ambassador Greenberg, I Presume...

In the whirl of last week's atoning for America's sin of electing George Bush president, I forgot to post this e-mail from Carrie Fischer Lepore, Director of Communications, PA Treasury Department.

It came in response to my print column about Janet Greenberg, a widow from Broomall, who goes through the state's gigantic list of unclaimed property and calls would-be beneficiaries to let them know they may have money waiting for them.

Here it is:

Good morning, Gil! What a wonderful, charming story! I loved it!

Treasurer (Robin) Wiessmann was so touched by Ms. Greenberg's work, that we're going to make her an "ambassador to Unclaimed Property" or something like that.

I would ask you for her contact information, by in the spirit of the story, I'll look her up in the telephone book!

A Mulligan for SCOTUS?

How about this?

WAPO calls for the Supreme Court to correct itself on the Kennedy v Louisiana (the death penalty for child rape case).

Fat chance. But cool.

UPDATE: "When a newspaper gets its facts wrong, it's supposed to publish a correction, and, if someone's reputation has been harmed, a retraction and apology. It can be embarrassing, but the occasional taste of crow probably does more good than harm to the media's credibility."

A Not So Modest Proposal

My print column on about how to "atone" for our torturing al Qaida terrorists is up.

According to one Inky columnist, if you celebrated Independence Day you're an immoral "coward."

UPDATE: In a folo-up yesterday, the columnist and former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page, Chris Satullo, had more to say. Specifically, that he had engaged in "hyperbole," that the storm troopers of Rush Limbaugh's Internet Army had written him nasty e-mails and some people even had the gall to question his "patriotism."

"...(Go) ahead, knock my logic or prose style. They're fair game. Scorn the shape of my nose, my manliness, and all the other stuff my kind correspondents attacked. But do not, do not, question my patriotism. Or that of any fellow citizen. Such words are unworthy of what we owe one another as Americans."

Funny, how liberals get so upset when someone questions their patriotism, even if it is someone they consider a complete idiot.

For the record, I did not make fun of his prose style (which was pretty bad, but you be the judge), his manliness, or the shape of his nose. I did make fun of his suggestion that 300 million Americans don't deserve to celebrate the Fourth this year because a handful of terrorists were roughly treated.

Now, he says he was merely being hyperbolic when he wrote:

"Don't imagine that only the torturer's hand bears the guilt. The guilt reaches deep inside our Capitol, and beyond that - to us. Our silence is complicit. In our name, innocents were jailed, humans tortured, our Constitution mangled. And we said so little. We can't claim not to have known. The best among us raised the alarm. Heroes in uniform, judges in robes, they opposed the perverse logic of an administration drenched in fear, drunk on power."

Such over-the-top writing tempts one to question whether Satullo actually meant what he said or if he was playing the satirist, mocking liberals for their unctous, self-righteous moralizing. But no, it's clear that he wasn't.

Satullo accuses his fellow Americans of being complicit in war crimes and atrocities and undeserving of celebrating their heritage and that's OK because he does so with "an earnest purpose."

Does he think the people who responded harshly to him and to his column don't have an earnest purpose?

This sounds like a case of -- hyperbole for me but not for thee.

But the worst thing about Satullo's reponse to his critics is not his hypocrisy but his mawkish self-regarding "misty-eyed" idealism.

"For the record, I love the United States of America. Always have, always will. I thank God for letting me be born here. I am a misty-eyed idealist about the Declaration, the Constitution and the Founders."

And so don't anyone, ever, question HIS patriotism!

His critics might respond, "Hey, this is America, where the Founders provided us with a First Amendment, so we can if we want to."

What's Satullo going to do about it? Challenge them to a duel?

I hope Chris doesn't think that by comparing him to the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright that I was questioning his love of America. What I was questioning was his judgement, his taste, and his senses.

His original piece suggested he had taken leave of them. His second suggested something more calculated: that he'd attempted to be provoke an angry response and gotten one.

But he ruined it with his "do not, do not..." umbrage.

Chris should remember, sticks and stone, sticks and stones...

UPDATE: In his second piece, Satullo refers to the first as being an example of his "Swiftian panache," and that was somehow missed by the Dittoheads who condemned it. As I recall when Jonathan Swift wrote his "A Modest Proposal" he didn't actually mean that his fellow Britishers should eat the babies of the poor. I don't suppose, Satullo was kidding when he suggested "We" Americans should be ashamed of ourselves for spitting in the faces of our country's founders. That he would suggest as much in his second piece is weak and cynical beyond belief.

If he'd really have wanted to be clever and satirical he would have headlined his column: "Porn On the Fourth of July."

It's The Character, Stupid

Specifically of refusal to be released by the Vietcong because he was the son of an admiral while his fellow POWs stayed behind.

"It may not take much effort to get shot down, but it must take a considerable act of will to consign oneself to more deprivation and torture. It must take a level of courage unknown to most to place concern for others above one's own interest."

A SCOTUS Screw Up

The New York Times discovers a factual flaw in the Supreme Court's reasoning on the death-penalty for child rape opinion... thanks to a blogger.

It turns out that since 2006 under military law a child rapist CAN get the death penalty. Whoops!

Justice Kennedy hung the majority's opinion on the "evolving standards of decency" assertion. It seems more constituencies, not less, are supporting the death penalty for a heinous crime. Maybe the standard of decency is evolving toward the death penalty instead of away from it.

Or maybe that argument was completely bogus in the first place, allowing "progressive" judges to undemocratically impose their personal moral beliefs on an entire country.

The Angel of Unclaimed Cash

My print column on the Broomall's Janet Greenberg is up. She goes through the state Treasury listings of people who have unclaimed money waiting for them so you don't have to.

Incidentally, we just received this e-mail that begins:

THIS IS FOR YOUR ATTENTION. With respect to the above reference number,we use this medium to inform you for the last time that you have been listed as a beneficiary to a total sum of £15,500,000.00GBP (Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds) in the codicil and last testament of the deceased.(Name now withheld since we have sent several letters to you).Our contact to you is based on the legal fact that you bear the same Last name identity with the deceased...

And ends...

Yours Faithfully, Geoffrey J Morris

British pounds? Could it be, Spencerblog is entitled an inheritence from the estate of Lady Diana Spencer? We're putting Janet on it right away.

Mike Gillen: Whistleblower?

Mike Gillen says his letter to the U.S. Attorney from a few years ago questioning certain "contracts" may be the reason the feds are investigating Chester Upland now.

If only Mark "I can't stand corruption" Sereni had been C-U's solicitor back then. There would have been a thorough internal investigation and the wrongdoers would already have been brought to justice.

But then, Sereni's buddy Keith Crego probably would have beenC-U's superintendent of schools. The mind reels.

CORRECTION: It is the state AGs office that is investigating Chester Upland. Not, the feds.

CLARIFICATION: It was C.U. Superintendent Gregory Thornton who told the Daily Times it was the FBI that requested documents and papers from the district. We screwed up. We believed him.

Fairy Tales Can Come True...

He's changed his mind on the foreign surveillance bill. He was against it if it included immunity for the telecoms, now he's for it even though it includes that immunity. He's softened his withdrawal-now-from-Iraq rhetoric and the same with his anti-free trade comments. Labor unions are taking notice.

He is supporting the opinions of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court in the gun-rights case and the rights of states to execute child rapists.

He is stumping for government-supported faith-based initiatives, and as a supporter of welfare reform.

Commentators on the Left are noticing the Obama Shift. Many don't like it. Others are happy to give him a pass believing that he is a true lefty and cleverly running not just to the center but to the right, in order to get elected.

Whether this is a strategy that will fool enough voters remains to be seen. But for those who buy his "Change you can believe in" slogan. They are more and more looking like naive suckers who might as well believe in the Easter Bunny.

The High Court of Self Esteem

Tweedle Dumbs on the Court

A federal court says a detainee being held at Guantanamo Bay must be released or given a new hearing because the evidence against his being an "enemy combatant" is so thin.

The prisoner, Huzaifa Parha, is part of a group of Chinese Muslims, known a Uighurs and he claims to be not an enemy of the United States but of China, for its harsh policies against his religion.

The AP leads its story with the court's reference to a Lewis Carroll poem to criticize the military panel acceptance of the State Department's assertion that the Parha is part of an al-Qaida connected terrorist group.

Buried at the bottom is the U.S. military's concern that if Parha were released and sent back to his homeland he'd be incarcerated and tortured.

For all the phony claims being lodged against our military and the personnel who run Guantanomo, they are, in most cases, more concerned about protecting prisoners from torture than all those yelling for the the detention center to be closed.

They also have the responsibility of trying to make sure those detainees who are released are not a threat to America and the rest of the world.

Already some 30 of those released have been known to have committed new acts of violence against America or our allies.

Closing Guantanamo would solve no problem other than what is perceived as a public relations issues.

Notice that the court doesn't require the release of this prisoner, only a new hearing. In this way, the judges avoid being responsible for having blood on their hands should such a prisoner go out and rejoin the jihad.

In this country, over the last 50 years, judges have freed thousands of murderers and allowed them to go out and kill again. They do this in the name of due process and justice. Now, the left wants to extent the same rights to foreign nationals as it does our home-grown murderers.

Not very bright.

In the meantime, the heartless and evil Bush administration wants to keep some of them locked up for their own protection. And ours.

Who is being stupid here?

UPDATE: Answer: Democrats on Capitol Hill, who are attempting to smear conscientious military leaders and the Bush Administration as sadistic torturers.